When I was 15 I had no idea that 15 years later I would dress like Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter. I hadn’t even seen the movie up until a month ago. I read a great post on the Selvedge Yard and had to see it, Mitchum just seemed awesome. In this role as Harry Powell (The Preacher) In the Night of the Hunter, he is dressed in a black old fashioned suit, black hat, western tie and with the now legendary Love – Hate tattoos on his hands. I don’t know how I could end up thinking that would be an good way to dress, without being in a movie from 1955 portraying an evil swindling preacher, but I did.

When I was 15 I started to buy second hand clothes, at first with not much understanding or thought, it was a bit of everything, but quite soon a style started to emerge. I went through the normal mid-teen kind of hippie style with flared cord jeans etc, my God I hate hippies, how could I? In my late teens I dressed like a full blown early Seventies rock star, think Rolling Stones and the Faces, with tight boot cut jeans, wide belts, Chelsea boots, shirts with long collars and a tight suit jacket on top of that. I played in a band called Stardust City and we were all in to the same kind of look. I remember in my early twenties I was up in the North of Sweden on a photo job and I had gone through all the charity shops on the way up and had filled the trunk with clothes for me and my girlfriend at the time Anna that was with me. We stopped and I changed my shoes from my old Puma Roma I was wearing to a pair of old pointy toed black leather shoes and I promised myself that I would never ever wear anything else than old mans leather shoes or Chelsea boots, this worked quite well until I moved to Barcelona.

When I was 25 I moved to London and I had started to wear more Sixties suits and this was my mod period. Anna that moved with me forced me to try on a waistcoat later that year and I haven’t taken it off since, well I have about 30 now but I normally wear a waistcoat everyday since. I don’t know what happened but I feel naked without a waistcoat. The fashion went from mod to the good old west, it was still 60’s, 1860’s that is. Here I am now, I still fit in all my old clothes and I occasionally look like some early Seventies rock star or dress up in one of my Sixties mod suits, but most of the time I just wear my skinny black jeans, boots, shirt, waistcoat and what ever suit jacket that feels right for the day without thinking about if the lapels are 60’s or 70’s. My inspiration went from the Rolling Stones and the Faces to the Band and without knowing it, Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter, especially now in the winter with my black Stetson on.

My main concern is always, what can I do when the summer comes? Last year I lost it completely and wore shorts from May to September, anything to survive in the Spanish heat. I don’t know if I pulled it off or not but it just got too hot with my super tight black jeans and shorts felt like such a relief. Hunter S Thompson used to wear shorts, I’m not sure if that’s enough to make it legit as a gentleman’s way to dress in the heat or not but it’s good enough for me.

The following images and text is taken from a great Robert Mitchum post by the Selvedge Yard.

[…] less attention here in Barcelona than it did in London, but for my shorts. As I mentioned in an earlier post I struggled a lot with what to wear in the summer when I first came here. I hadn’t worn […]

[…] hate when I get obsessed with things, see my previous posts about Stetson, Gretsch White Falcon and The Night of the Hunter. This morning I was browsing through a Bob Dylan blog and got stuck at the photo […]